On my visit, I entered the church and found myself alone. I wasn't expecting to feel the depth of emotion I felt on closing the door and standing in the interior of the church. Once inside I felt a surge of what I might describe as reverence, that made me pause and stand still. The atmosphere was dark, quiet, hushed, the sense of time standing by. Something hard to describe, a moment of breathlessness that I wanted to hold onto.
The motif of wandering, the feeling of restlessness is there in the Rodinksy book - it circles around the myth of the room and is always starting out. In the book, I like the aura of the photographs, the suppressed and concealed histories that buildings contain. It helps me to think about what is hidden and hopeless, what seems lost about my own project. How it changes and disappears before my eyes. Sinclair writes about Rachel Lichtenstein and her quest, how she is drawn to an empty space that is at once charged with energy, about what is paralyzing about her obsession, how she must 'find some resolution or lose herself forever in the attempt.'
By the water’s edge, the monument to the immigrant, looking back at the city, looking out across the wide and muddy river. Situated at the point of arrival, the old port of New Orleans, marking the point of embarkation, the journey’s end and the start of crossings and travels, hopes and dreams. A two-sided statue, a decorated figure, like those carved on a ship’s prow looks out to the water; an immigrant family look towards the city. The crescent city lies at a bend in the Mississippi River. A city haunted by its migrants, by their comings and goings, the history of these streets and those who walked them.
Finding herself with little money and no plan after Stephan's arrest, Marya accepts an invitation to stay with the Heidlers in their studio on the Avenue de l’Observatoire. In the book we are told that the Heidlers 'lived on the second floor of a high building half-way up the street'. The studio is situated near the Luxembourg Gardens, and at night they walk together through the ‘lovely, crooked silent streets’. I find the tall, elegant houses of the Avenue de l'Observatoire, leading away from the gardens, and walk along trying to decide in which building the studio might have been located.
The city streets themselves are often figured as rivers, full of reflections of light and water that suggest a fluidity, a crossing of boundaries. The great dark river is the other of the streets. At night the river becomes like the streets, a living presence, as suggested in the idea of the street walking in which forms the overarching image for my project.
The book is semi-autobiographical, and recreates aspects of Colette's life on the stage. I am fascinated by her portrayal of the music hall, and the people she met there, and her bringing to life of the streets and locale of Montmartre and Paris. Mostly for her use of language, her words like a gift, with their warmth, grace, ease and clarity. With its poetic, vivid and direct style of writing, this is a voice which feels alive and never dated. Intoxicated, I am under its spell.
The sense of unreality that comes from walking within an invented form, a tangle of signs and symbols, and all the time knowing that it isn’t real. The labyrinth is part of the circle of time, of finding myself back at the place I started, of living within an illusion, a figure of the imagination. The streets are not really a labyrinth, and at the same time when I look at a map, they appear circular, so that walking around and the names of the streets create a sense of repetition, like being caught in a recurring dream.
The road to Skyllberg is the turning we take off the main road on the last day of our trip. Not just a location on the map, but a symbol, found somewhere between the past and present. Each recall of memory is like a draft worked over and over. Each time I want to recreate the moment when we turn the corner and find the lake hidden behind trees.
The Palais de Justice is located on the Quai des Orfèvres on the Île de la Cité by the river Seine. Stretching out along the river bank, it dominates the scenery, grand and forbidding. It is one of the oldest official buildings in Paris, a site of great historic events, and revolution; the palace of justice, a monument to justice and injustice, looking out across Paris.
Now I follow the Rue de Rome towards the old port. Everywhere the buildings with shutters, white and pastel, as if the sun has drained and turned everything a faded white. The harbour lined with boats, their sails blue and white; in lines they point upwards, their forms definite and leaving shadow. The reflections in the water are gentle ripples which turn them back to trees, they are branches bending gently with the movement of water. There is a big wheel circling slowly and up into the blue. I take photographs into the sun to see how they are drenched by light, as though the sun has pulled all the colours out and left only reflected lights.
The Street Walks In 